The PM who puts his interests first

Commentators who describe Prime Minister Kevin Rudd as a “Labor movement outsider” have a poor understanding of Labor history. Photo: Andrew Meares

Mark Latham

One of the standard jokes in the NSW Labor Party is about the way in which Kevin Rudd rolled Kim Beazley for the federal leadership in 2006.

In the months leading up to the ballot, Rudd undertook a lobbying program known as the “Sussex Street suck-up”. Each Friday morning, after completing his funny-ha-ha session in the Sydney studio of the Channel 7 Sunrise program, the ambitious Queenslander would wander down Martin Place towards Sussex Street, the factional cathedral of the NSW Right.

Any party or union official willing to talk to Rudd was subjected to a long spiel about the greatness of Kevin.

“Well, that’s enough from me,” Rudd would say, pausing for effect. “What do you think about me?”

The conversations were as ­lopsided as a Greater Western Sydney footy match.

No one in Labor history has lobbied harder for support among the party’s sub-factions. Rudd was a regular face among the faceless men. It was said of his relationship with Joe de Bruyn, the powerful head of the religious-right Shoppies’ union, that Kevin spent more time with Joe than de Bruyn spent with his parish priest.

After Rudd ran unsuccessfully for the seat of Griffith in 1996, his brother Greg told him to “get down to Sydney and become one of them, because to get anywhere you’ll need the support [of the NSW powerbrokers]”. This was prescient advice.

In each of his two caucus leadership victories – in 2006 and 2013 – Rudd was supported by the state’s general secretary, doubling up as the head of the NSW Right.

Commentators should brush up on Labor history

Commentators who describe the Prime Minister as a “Labor movement outsider” have a poor understanding of Labor history. Rudd fitted the identikit of a party insider, right up to the moment in June 2010 when Julia Gillard told him she had the numbers. Overnight, the poacher who had been zipping around the killing fields of factional treachery, working against every Labor leader under whom he had served, became a gamekeeper. As with much of Rudd’s agenda, party reform only mattered when it mattered to him.

Against this history, Rudd is Labor’s accidental reformer. Nonetheless, whether by accident or altruism, rule changes to give the party’s rank-and-file a say in the election of the parliamentary leader are welcome. In the past decade, the ALP has had six different leaders, a revolving door spun ever harder by the 24 union-based subfactional warlords who dominate caucus. The bastardry of this culture is unsustainable.

Genuine party reform has a single mobilising purpose: to put the subfactional chiefs out of business.

Unfortunately, Rudd’s reform package fails to achieve this goal. It is based on an unsatisfactory compromise: taking away 50 per cent of the power of the subfactions to elect the leader, but restoring 100 per cent of their power to pick Labor’s frontbench. This is why the warlords are supporting Rudd’s plan: in terms of manipulating caucus outcomes, they are 50 per cent in front. One of the prerogatives they truly treasure – claiming frontbench spots for their small band of caucus followers – is back in their hands.

Anyone wanting to understand the chaos of this system from the last time it was used (after the 2004 election) should read The Latham Diaries, pages 361-68.

An unsatisfactory trade

Rudd has traded away the power to pick the frontbench for a rule change benefiting his interests: job security for the leader. But the contradiction is obvious.

If the faceless men are unsuitable for the task of selecting Labor leaders, why should they be re-empowered to control the selection of Labor ministries and shadow ministries? Instead of meekly renovating the subfactional system, Rudd needs to dismantle it.

If he were serious about party reform he would move on four fronts: giving rank-and-file members 100 per cent of the voting franchise when electing the leader, allowing the leader to select the frontbench, using community preselections (rather than subfactional deal-making) to choose Labor candidates, and reducing trade union representation at party conferences to match union coverage in the workforce (no more than 20 per cent).